The Management Agency of ESAP2 holds Learning and Documentation Awards

The introduction of special needs education to Debre work Primary School and a farmer’s journey from walking barefoot to becoming a well-off farmer in Kuyu Woreda – this year’s Learning and Documentation awards brought to light so many remarkable stories. The awards were organized for Social Accountability Implementing Partners and individuals they work with on 29 March 2017 in Adama. Organized by the Management Agency of ESAP2, the awards aim to honor SAIPs for their documentation and communication efforts aimed at spreading the social accountability practice.

The awards took place in line with the Learning Benchmark Workshop which featured presentations on council engagement, community contribution, scaling SA and sectors engagement in the SA process.

On the event, Ato Demeke Abate, Channel one PBS team leader at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation (MoFEC), said, “The government has given due emphasis to the expansion of basic public service delivery. In support of this, development partners provide considerable financial support. Over the years, SA has served as a controlling mechanism to see if budget allocated by the government in each sector is really meeting the needs of citizens.

This year’s awards were held in four different categories – Participatory Video Oscar, Theatre for Social Accountability, SAC hero and Most Significant Change Story. Speaking of her contributions that made her stand out, one of the winners of the SAC hero category, Azeb Bogale, said, “I have used an annual platform organized by woreda 7 FTA to share Behere Ethiopia Primary School’s experience on SA to all sectors and introduced sector representatives to Community Score Card. I have also facilitated experience sharing events for Kebena Kindergarten and Primary school and Kebena health center.

This year’s theme for the Learning and Documentation Awards in all categories was ‘sustainability/ scaling of social accountability’. This alludes to the aim of the ESAP bridging phase to deepen social accountability in 223 woredas. The communication products submitted for the awards showed efforts made to sustain and scale social accountability.

The event also created a platform for SAIPs to discuss their individual scaling strategies of social accountability to more kebeles and to pro-poor sectors that were not yet targeted under ESAP2. Abebe Asefa, Project Coordinator of Redeem the Generation (RtG) said, “We were able to reflect on the practical activities we were engaged in over the past six months and also saw if others have the same experiences and challenges. I have hopes that we can do better with the remaining Bridging Phase period. The competition was also another learning platform. It was intense and we witnessed great ideas surfacing as part of it. The theatre was entertaining and informative, not on one but all sectors. It was a great event.

The Learning Benchmark and awards ceremony was held in the presence of 300 participants including officials from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation (MoFEC), Federal Sector Ministries, Development Partners, select service users, service providers, woreda councils, BoFEDs, selected sector bureaux, and regional councils; Charities and Societies Agency, Ethiopian Institute of Ombudsman and Federal House.